Who said tax is boring?

Celebrity Squares

Adolf Hitler is, for me, ancient history, while Churchill is almost pinchable. Why the distinction regarding two implacable foes, the height of whose infamy and fame coincided exactly? It is simply because, by the time I was born, Hitler had been dead for over a decade, while I remember Churchill’s funeral, 50 years ago next week, vividly. Hitler was in black-and-white. Churchill was in colour.

We tend to think back on our childhood as steady-state. I was 10 years old when Colour TV came to Britain and have always thought of it as a major revolution in British life. In fact, although the BBC had started broadcasting in 1936, few homes had TVs until around 15 years before Colour hit the living room. The story of the last hundred and fifty years has been one of continuous change.

Change has been as true of Celebrity as of any other field. Although the early twentieth century brought images of mute silver-screen stars to the world’s movie theatres, it was Charles Lindbergh who, thanks to his groundbreaking transatlantic flight in 1927, was the first true international celebrity. World leaders were not seriously heard until the 1930s, so that, when the British people had the lion’s heart in the dark days of 1940, Churchill’s roar was quite a novelty. It wasn’t surprising that the Old Man was crowned Time Magazine’s Man of the Half-Century in 1950 (he was beaten for the full century by Einstein), or that he was later voted, almost by acclamation, as the Greatest Englishman, whatever that may mean.

High Flyer

Through the second half of the twentieth century, celebrity had two significant branches – entertainment and glitzy wealth on the one hand, and politics on the other. If you were not an embarrassing extrovert or a politician, you could expect to live your life in blissful anonymity. Then came the Information Revolution. Everybody was out there with the potential to reach the world – even if the world wasn’t really that interested in being reached by most of them. But who cared? It was cheap and worth a go.

Which brings me to my point. I am a tax advisor. I am, despite what it says in the sub-headline to this blog, boring. Tax advice is something to be practiced behind closed doors by consenting adults. Should I ever become a celebrity, it will not (or at least, should not) be because I dispense advice about the laws and practices of taxation.

But, it appears, the times they are a’changing. After the OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration aired its maiden internet TV broadcast last year, its head – the drop-dead gorgeous Pascal Saint-Amans – has now been declared Person of the Year by none other than Tax Notes International (which you will be forgiven for never having heard of). In a wide-ranging interview on the progress of the world-famous BEPS project, he declares that he is ‘the luckiest person in the tax world’. Now, go steady there, Pascal. A tax attorney who pocketed a $10 million success fee might argue that you are in second place. We know you are an important bloke, and you and your team have to philosophise a lot about the future of taxation, but – as I have written in the past – philosophy is to international taxation what a bicycle is to a fish. You, and the world-famous Tax Notes International, may think that the BEPS project is up there with the Theory of Relativity and World War II, but frankly it isn’t.

Dazzling

When tax bureaucrats become celebrities – and I stress that I am sure Mr Saint-Amans is amazingly good at whatever he does from 9 to 5 – it is time to think about hanging up ones Oxford Shoes. A good tax advisor is someone who has a broad view of the business and political environment around him. There is plenty more to read about than irrelevant bla-bla regarding tax people similar to himself.

So I say to the editors and my fellow readers of Tax Notes International: ‘Get a life!’